How things become "Things"

I don't know quite what to call them but I am fascinated by "unintended special events." That's a horrible term, but I'm referring to things that became "Things" accidentally. This is hard to explain so I'll just start giving some examples.

Black Friday
The first day after Thanksgiving has long been deemed "black Friday" by retailers (which means black as in, "in the black" -- making profit). But there was never some universal decision to make this a special day. I can't give a particularly knowledgeable history here but my best guess is that this became "black Friday" completely by accident. Over the years, as a consumer focus on Christmas shopping became more prevalent, I think we as a society moved more and more toward a "holiday to holiday" mindset. The stores stock items relevant to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas in successive order, and the combination of Thanksgiving being over and most people having that Friday off from work turned that day into an ideal shopping day. Retailers capitalized on this, creating special sales, and the process fed on itself until the day became a shopping event. This year it got particularly crazy with one person at a Wal-Mart trampled to death and gunfire at a Toys 'R' Us. But when it comes down to it, there is no particular reason for this to be a special event. It is a byproduct of the holiday calendar and consumer marketing.

Superbowl Ads
By most standards, TV commercials are an annoyance -- they're something we put up with because they fund the networks that provide us with hours of (ostensible) entertainment. But now watching the Superbowl specifically for the commercials has become a national pastime. Much like Black Friday, this was an event that fed upon itself. Knowing the huge audience for the Superbowl, and the limited attention spans of viewers, companies put more and more effort into making their Superbowl ads stand out. As the audience got wise to this, they became more discerning, comparing the ads against each other, turning the event into the competition for the best Superbowl ad of the year. The free press (and today, re-viewing on sites like YouTube) often make the multi-million dollar investments for 30 seconds of airtime into cultural touchstones. Today, some people who don't even care about the Superbowl itself still watch just to see the ads -- something virtually no other program can lay claim to.

Red Carpet Fashion
The purpose of awards shows like the Oscars is to, well, give awards to the best films (or music, or TV, etc.) of the year, and to drum up some publicity and ticket sales in the process. But it was never the stated intent of such shows to promote fashion. But as more and more stars took the opportunity to look their best on Oscar day, the reporters on the red carpet in turn paid more notice to their clothes, and now many networks and publications give their own awards for "best dressed." Joan Rivers in particular has made "who are you wearing?" a key question on the red carpet. (It's worth noting that the term "red carpet" itself is a thing-turned-"Thing" -- it was only through the repeated use of red carpets on the walkways into awards halls that it came to be synonymous with awards shows and premieres.)

There are certainly more examples, but I love thinking about how these unexpected turns happen. There are a ton on the internet alone -- LOLspeak, viral marketing -- and I think it's important to distinguish this from "memes," which are brief trends that everyone knows about for a few months but soon die away. I may post a part 2 soon but I like being reminded that no matter how shrewd a marketer or advertiser may think he/she is, ultimately the biggest trends occur through a series of unplannable accidents.

More on the overlap of politics and usability

In my last entry I mentioned how I feared getting too political. But despite that fear I'm going to soldier on. I've become borderline obsessed with the economy, and various approaches to handling it, and have constantly been thinking about the decisions I would think best were I in a position of power.

Full disclosure -- I have considered myself most closely connected to libertarianism, as I like the concept that we really should be free to do what we want without government intervention. But, and here's where usability kicks in -- we don't always *know* everything necessary to make the best choices.

There seems to be two sides to this -- either you say that it is up to you to educate yourself, and a bad choice is your own fault, but you are free to make it, or you say that people should be prevented from making such bad choices through regulation and laws that take bad options off the table.

I've come to appreciate the concept of "soft paternalism" or "libertarian paternalism," which basically says, you are free to make whatever choice you want, but we are going to try our best to steer you in the right direction.

This is almost the essence of usability in a nutshell. Make it easy for people to make choices that will satisfy them. Emphasize the most common or most logical paths but provide alternate routes to get to other options if someone knows specifically what they already want. The wikipedia article I link above has a great description, with specific reference to "defaults" -- a concept that usability expert Jakob Nielsen has written about, stressing the importance of setting defaults wisely so they are set to the most likely beneficial setting.

Compare the two. Wikipedia, giving the example of setting your retirement contribution from your paycheck (emphasis mine in both quotes):

The asymmetry of soft paternalism can be seen in the case of a policy which raises default rates. Those who are making an informed deliberate choice to put aside zero percent of their income in tax deferred savings still have this option, but those who were not saving simply out of inertia or due to procrastination are helped by higher default contribution rates.

Now read Jakob Nielsen:

Users rely on defaults in many other areas of user interface design. For example, they rarely utilize fancy customization features, making it important to optimize the default user experience, since that's what most users stick to. ... By educating and guiding users, default values help reduce errors. It's therefore important to select helpful defaults, rather than those based on the first letter of the alphabet or whatever the first option on your original list happened to be.

Imagine for a moment that at all aspects of our lives, rather than starting from "zero" on any new thing, we started anything by being told right off the bat what the most common or most beneficial starting place was, but were given the option to change that in any way we see fit. Smart businesses already apply this in many areas, essentially putting Nielsen's usability advice in effect. But I think the applications of such a concept are much more far-reaching.

I don't know that this means that "soft paternalism" and "good usability" are identical, or that the concepts therein can be applied universally, but I was struck at the similarities between the two. At the very least, it shows that you can successfully apply similar philosophies to different disciplines.

Could better usability save the economy?

Okay, maybe that headline is an overstatement, but I'd say usability is an overlooked component in saving the economy. Like any American who pays attention to current events, the economic downturn is at the forefront of my mind right now. And there is one area that has troubled me quite a bit -- the whole mortgage meltdown.

There are kind of two sides to the mortgage problem (ignoring for a moment the whole "credit swaps" thing -- which is a pretty big piece to ignore but just roll with me here): there are the individuals who bought homes they could not afford, and there are the lenders who signed off on mortgages they likely knew the buyer could not afford to repay.

Much has been made of the "predatory lenders" -- the system is set up such that a lot of the places granting the initial mortgages get a few years of high (or all) interest payments before passing the mortgage off to some larger firm for the remainder and letting them deal with the fallout of potential foreclosure. Ultimately, the initial lenders don't really care about whether or not the lendee can pay it all back -- they just want that initial burst of nearly pure-profit payments.

But what bothers me about this attack on "predatory lenders" is that pretty much any business out there seeks to increase profit, so why pick on lenders? It seems to be to be attaching some moral expectation to something that is amoral (not immoral, mind you). Paying for goods and services is a mutual exchange where each side gets something they want.

The consumer-minded side says this is unfair, but I think it's risky to remove any responsibility from the individual. If you sign a contract that requires you to pay a certain amount of money, it's ultimately your own fault if you end up unable to hold up your end of the bargain. Really, a foreclosure is the fault of the homeowner, not the lender -- even if the lender suspected you wouldn't be able to pay it back, if you have stated that you can and will pay things back, you're the one who's made the promise you can't keep.

Where this all breaks down is that not every lender is going to be explicit in terms of costs, not every homeowner is going to know to check all the fine print, and those two problems can feed off each other into a pretty dangerous spiral.

This is where usability comes into play. One of the tenets of good usability is that you don't blame the "user" if they have a problem. Even if everything to accomplish a task is there, if your users are failing to do it, then you have a problem with the presentation. You don't just say your users are stupid (because then you're both insulting your customers and losing business), you try to adjust things to make it clearer and easier to understand.

I am not familiar with the rules and regulations around signing a mortgage, but I am virtually certain the amount of paperwork involved would be confusing to even the savviest person. From a usability perspective, it's a nightmare. I have no doubt that people have signed contracts not realizing that the initial $800 a month payment is going to balloon to $2000, or that the total they pay for a $300,000 home is actually going to be something like a million dollars.

Imagine for a moment that regulations required that all major contracts have a one-page cover sheet that included clearly the monthly payment, how the monthly payment may change over time, the breakdown of interest and principal, and the total amount to be eventually paid. All of this in nice big fonts with a clear layout that is easy to read.

I fear getting too political in this blog, but I can't help but think that so many of the problems in our current economic crisis boil down to people making decisions without knowing all the information. And while many people think that the problem was a lack of regulating the kinds of decisions that could be made, I would say that the greater problem was not requiring full disclosure and clarity be provided before anyone makes any major transaction. Whether that is a potential homeowner or a potential investor, if there was a requirement of a crystal clear one-sheet explanation of the pending transaction in layman's terms, you may find fewer questionable decisions being made in the first place.

As an analogy, New York City recently began requiring chain restaurants to print calorie information next to meals. The caloric totals shocked people (some salads have more calories than a burger and fries!?), but those trying to eat healthy had full information at their disposal rather than uninformed guessing. Compare this regulation to some alternative legislation that may have required that restaurants stop serving high calorie dishes altogether. The former regulation puts the onus on the individual, but provides them with full disclosure in a clear manner. The other is the government deciding what's good for you, expecting that you won't make the good decision for yourself and taking options off the table. I'm sure some people would still prefer the latter, but I really think that letting people make their own choice, for good or bad, is better than trying to make it for them -- just make sure they know the consequences of their choices.

Usability is ultimately about providng clear information. If we can manage that, and let people make fully informed decisions, we can encourage responsibility without removing choice.

So I got an iPhone

I'm not really a gadget-head. As a diehard skeptic of, well, everything, I typically meet any new gadget with the question "why would I need this?" And usually there is no compelling reason.

But after spending months with a phone that repeatedly shut itself off upwards of ten times a day, sometimes mid-phone call, I was ready to switch, and decided to just go ahead and plunk down the dollars for an iPhone. I'm so happy I did.

I knew that it would combine my phone and MP3 player into one device, which I liked. I also knew it'd allow a few more things, namely web browsing. But I didn't realize the extent to which its app store would make the device an all-in-one EVERYTHING. I can play video games, control my desktop from the phone, update my Facebook status, listen to radio stations... it's pretty cool. (I should note, for the record, that lest this read like an Apple ad I am sure that similar smartphones like the G1 and Blackberry Storm are capable of doing many of these things as well.)

But as I was browsing reviews for good apps and downloading them on my laptop, it struck me as odd that I still have to actually attach a wire from the laptop to the iPhone. A minor problem, really, but it got me thinking about the future of computing and the whole concept of syncing. We are moving further and further away from a hard-coded "this machine does this" mindset to a software-driven wireless world where you can do anything from anywhere from any machine. We've already moved past some of the typical physical limitations of the world -- I haven't bought a CD in 2 years for example, yet have bought tons of music. Virtually every piece of software people get these days no longer requires a box with a disc in it, and can be just downloaded online. And as hardware limitations decrease to the point where, in all likelihood, we are just a few years away from pretty much every new computer can do pretty much everything, the actual machines we're on may reach a point of irrelevance as well. Imagine going up to any computer anywhere, logging in with some password, and having all of the same data and programs available to you anywhere. Services like this already exist, but this is by no means universal.

We're going to just all have our own "clouds" at some point soon. An amalgamam of files, programs, software, data, etc. that requires no physical anything except for the data storage facilities of the providers.

Not to get all sci-fi on you, but this basically means there will be two versions of any of us. The physical being, and the data identity. Some people find that scary, I find it fascinating.

And to me the most interesting part of all of this is that it happens so quickly and seamlessly. Just imagine ten years ago, the whole concept of your whole world reachable by one device in your pocket was probably hard to fathom. But it has happened, and is getting more dramatically omnipresent every day.

Which is just. So. Cool.

Designing for failure

It only takes going through a handful of creative projects to realize that virtually every tiny thing is done purposefully. Very little happens by accident, and because of this, one of my mini-pastimes is looking at common designs and trying to figure out how they came to be (or, in contrast, why antiquated designs went out of style). Last night I was pondering how the anthropomorphizing of food -- a smiley face on a popcorn box or a cup of soda -- became a successful marketing technique. And I've been wondering for months about the process that led to the creation of traffic signs -- perhaps the most vital instance of usability in action, as a failure to communicate properly could be fatal.

But I'd like to focus right now on the concept of designing for failure. Of course, an ideal system would make it virtually impossible for someone to fail, but even the most simplistic and clear designs are going to stump a few people, and sometimes failure can occur due to other complexities in the system. My shining example? Copy machines.



(Okay I know that's not a copy machine but at least it involves a cat.)

Jams in the copy machine are obscenely commonplace, as anyone who has worked in an office knows, and they can be extremely frustrating. But they're unavoidable; the mechanics of these machines are so complex that the smallest problems can trigger a jam. I imagine that early copying machines broke down so frequently that calling for a repairman became an untenable situation, and the "fix it yourself" process for un-jamming a copier became a standard for the industry. You know the drill, open the side of the machine, pull out tray 3a, take out the jammed paper from some spinny thingy labeled 5c, etc. It's annoying, but it usually works, and you can get back to copying. The time and cost savings of not having to call a repairman is well worth the minor inconvenience of having to fix it yourself.

This same concept can be applied to just about any design, including a website. You can have what you think is the most sensible site structure and design possible, with a big clearly labeled button for some key task, only to find that sometimes your visitors just miss it entirely or click the wrong thing or otherwise end up lost and confused.

The keys to anticipating error involve eliminating opportunities to make a mistake (ahem), and offering alternative paths to get to the desired result if the visitor misses or doesn't understand the primary path. While a lot of web visitors will resort to the back button and try again, you have to remember that the back button may be taking them off your site altogether. For example, let's say they search on Google for something in your industry and use the word "compare" -- this may take them to a page on your site which compares your various products. But if the visitor was looking for comparisons across a variety of brands, rather than just within one brand, the page won't be what they want, and they may end up at another site altogether. But if you have a prominent link that says "Compare to the Competition," well they just may click on that and stay with you on your site.

Other suggestions to keep visitors on the right path: use logical naming conventions (e.g., "About Us" is much more intuitive than something like "Our Way of Thinking"), provide alternative paths (e.g., include a search option, and highlight relevant contextual links on key pages, etc.), and remove anything that does not hold a lot of value to the user (a page full of marketing copy may show up high on search results but will likely not actually provide the hard info the user is looking for).

Plan for the copy jam. If you do, your visitor will be able to get back on track to find what they want rather than abandoning you entirely.

A handful of basics

There are some rules of thumb ("heuristics" for you fancy types) for designing with usability in mind that are helpful to remember. These are some of the things I try to keep in mind:

• People don't read
  They really don't. Sure, they'll read your blog if it's a topic that interests them, but on your marketing site, keep your text concise and support it with other visual clarity. People love to look at imagery and photos, but they will only scan snippets of your text until they find the one thing that interests them.
  
• Make your text readable
  When your visitors do read, they want it to be easy. Use medium-to-large fonts, use high contrast (no light gray on white, please), and don't use jarring color combinations, like red text on a bright green background. Also, avoid caps - we read based not just on letters but on shapes too, and all-caps denies us this.
• Don't use "splash" pages on websites
  Hoo boy is this a big one. No one, I repeat no one, wants to watch your fancy flash intro to your site. Visitors are there to get information, and all this does is slow them down.
• Less is more
  Is it vital? If not, get rid of it.
• Good-looking does not equal good
  Very pretty sites can be horrible to use. Ugly sites can be easy to use (hello, Craig's List!). Ideally you can be both visually appealing and usable, but never assume they go hand in hand.
• Separate personal taste from your customers' taste
  This is so hard to get past -- we want things to look and act in ways that meet our individual tastes. But if you're creating something for a particular audience, make sure it appeals to them -- not necessarily to you. I once watched a project that involved a camp brochure aimed at kids go from being bright, colorful, and fun to plain, conservative, and "elegant" in order to please some boardmembers. Wrong move. What appeals to 13 year olds and 53 year olds is going to be very different.
• Be scannable
  When creating lists, particularly in navigation, keep them left-aligned, and make each line start with the most key word. For example, on a site that lets you register copyrighted material, don't start each line with "Register Your Song" or "Register Your Album." Change that to "Song Registration" and "Album Registration" -- the leading word now carries more value and is easier to scan in a vertical list.

The shackles of innovation

It's a word that has lost virtually meaning due to its constant repetition: innovation. Any number of industries must hear this word all the time -- it seems like the single most important thing to just about everyone. Is your product, or site, or approach innovative? If not, it might as well be worthless. Everyone is trying to "think outside the box" (a phrase so cliched at this point that even putting it in quotes doesn't give it the ironic distance it deserves). There is a widespread assumption that the status quo is bad, the way we do anything today is inferior to some "new" way we've yet to discover, and the search for this "new" way should trump all other efforts.

I can't agree with any of that. Striving fervently for innovation strikes me as severely misdirected effort, not because I believe innovation is bad, but because I think it is a side effect, not a goal unto itself.

The biggest problem with focusing solely on innovation, in my mind, is the assumption that current ways are bad -- it is starting with a ground floor decision to disregard all the prior work done by those in your field to get you where you are today. It is certainly true that previous work may have been done based on faulty information, incorrect assumptions, and other ill-advised decisions that could have brought things to a highly imperfect state today. But it is by no means a guarantee -- in fact, the opposite could also be true. Your product/site/whatever could be the way it is today because of highly reasoned research and testing that led to it being extremely solid and well thought-out. Unless you know all this background already, you can't really claim that innovation is necessary.

Focusing solely on innovation also sidesteps what should probably be the true goal of any project - to make the best product/site possible. A thorough process will explore the tried and true ways as well as newer, more innovative approaches. In many cases, more standard, "non-innovative" methods may prove to be the best fit.

Let's say you create a new site or product and all your testing and research leads to a conclusion that your best bet is to rely on well-established techniques. Had your goal been solely to innovate, this project would be a failure -- you've created nothing innovative. And yet, you've created the best possible product/site for your users -- the only problem was that it didn't involve creating anything truly new, just using existing principles to their greatest effect. How could that be bad?

Now let's consider the converse situation. Rather than seeking innovation, your goal at the start of a project is solely to create the best product/site possible. You do your brainstorming and research and find that the best solution is one that DOES in fact use a new, innovative approach -- it is thoroughly supported by your testing. No one would call this project a failure, and by focusing on making the best product/site possible, you've now overdelivered by also finding an innovative approach in the process. Innovation was not the goal -- it was icing on the cake.

There are a lot of reasons why innovation is still such a prized asset -- it's sexy, it sounds good, it shakes designers out of their boredom -- but these are not enough to warrant prizing it above quality. Think you've got a better way to do something? By all means, explore that new method and see if it works better -- but be willing to recognize the value in also learning that it's possible an existing method is still superior.

I should mention that this post is partially inspired by Scott Berkun, who I saw speak at the UI12 conference in Cambridge, MA, in 2007. He spoke about the "myths of innovation" and mentioned, for example, how innovations are often accidents, and he also talked about how the word "innovation" has indeed lost a lot of meaning over the years. I don't claim that this post represents his opinions at all, but his talk came back into my mind as I worked on a recent project that was driven by a client's desire to innovate. Check out his blog, it's got some good stuff.

Cut cut cut!

For many people who have websites, this is a sad but almost undoubtedly true fact: No one wants to read what you have to say.

First, let me give a caveat - if you have a blog or some opinion-based or news-based site, chances are people that visit your site do actually want to read what you have to say. But, most sites do not fall into that category. Also, this is not to say that visitors won't read anything at all -- but all most visitors want to do is find a specific piece of information very quickly and move on. Nobody sets out looking for self-hyping or vague filler, and any amount of that present on your site is an obstacle to their goal.

What I've said in previous posts about being self-aware or maintaining objectivity applies strongly here -- do you read websites? When you search for something and find a relevant hit, do you explore a site, patiently sit through a flash intro, and read paragraphs of marketing copy? The answer is probably no. So why would you expect your visitors to do that?

I've seen cases where I get the distinct impression a client is afraid that not having a lot of pages and a lot of text will send a message to the visitor that there is a lack of substance there. This couldn't be further from the truth. A trim, efficient, streamlined site that is light on fluff but clear and direct on content will send a message that you know what you're talking about, you know what the visitor wants, and you don't waste time and energy on the superfluous. Probably the only commodity more valuable than money is time, and no one wants their time wasted.

So I'm going to listen to my own advice and keep this short. Some simple rules:

• Be ruthless and be willing to edit - because your visitors are ruthless with the "back" button and will ditch your page in seconds if they don't see what they want right away.
• Every piece of content you write needs to deliver vital information that the visitor wants to read, otherwise you need to get rid of it.
  
• Be willing to delete entire pages if their content is unnecessary or so light it could easily be combined with other pages.
  
• Don't be long-winded; write concisely.
  
• And perhaps underpinning all of this: don't be emotionally attached to any of your content, or you'll cheat yourself out of making the best site for your visitors.

Objectivity is a dying art

It's hard not to notice, as the US moves into the final days of election season, how increasingly polarized a lot of people are. Making an objective assessment of anything seems to have gone out of style, and I think it's to our great detriment.

This blog isn't about politics, but I think this concept of turning every decision into a battle has carried over into many aspects of our lives, including management and design. Take, for example, a designer who believes strongly in simplicity and reducing clutter (as I do). You'd think the best way to put together a recommended design in that instance would be to analyze what's needed and suggest a minimalist design that still offers all the necessary functionality. But I've seen situations where, expecting push back from a client to add more, the minimalist-leaning designer ends up recommending something that is even more scaled back than they believe it should be. If their design were approved right off the bat, it wouldn't even be what they want. They expect an equally opposing force to fight them, and hope that they land somewhere that looks like their actual recommendation.

The end result is that rather than working as teams to accomplish the best work possible, each faction takes the core of their suggested beliefs and recommends an "extremist" version of it, believing that it will be watered down over the iteration process to hopefully land somewhere close to what they really think is best. Everyone becomes an advocate for a particular strong viewpoint, and the end result is not so much a happy compromise as it is a series of concessions. We deliberately don't look at things objectively because we think, "well, if I'm objective, and the other person isn't, I'll lose so much ground that my stance will be lost." We turn off our objectivity, and sometimes don't even know why we're fighting for things anymore, except that it seems like it's the side we should be on. Sometimes the other side does have a good idea -- a better one than you had -- and we should embrace those as learning opportunities rather than as "giving in."

This process doesn't usually end with a happy solution. It ends with something everyone feels moderately comfortable enough not to continue fighting over.

I don't have any particular proposition for how to change this, beyond just trying to foster objectivity more in your own work. I try to look at my own designs and ask, "is this really the best way?" Sometimes I'll do a full design on something and scrap the whole thing because, after stepping back, I realize my initial assumptions about the best design were off track. I try to listen to critical feedback and objectively accept when that feedback is right. If I love something, but everyone who sees it is confused by it, it's irresponsible of me to ignore that -- I try to figure out why my instinct was off and how I can adjust to avoid making that mistake again.

I'm not perfect at this by any means, but I do value objectivity and think it's to everyone's benefit to be a little more willing to stand back and take a critical look through someone else's eyes. You might see something you never thought of before.

Launched: Trinity Boston Foundation concert page

My association with Trinity Church and the Trinity Boston Foundation goes back over four years, and I'm very grateful that in the time since I left working for them full-time, I have still been asked to help with a variety of design projects. These have included invitations, postcards, brochures, email newsletters, and now a one-off set of two pages to promote their 2008-2009 concert season, which was launched about a week and a half ago.

This project was a fairly quick and simple one, as they were on a tight timeline, but sometimes "quick and simple" yields exactly the kind of bold, clear designs that get the job done.

You can see the pages here: http://www.trinityinspires.org/building/music/

Widescreens in motion

With widescreens and browsers on the mind, I noticed a nice way to use some of that "extra" space browser windows may provide on larger screens. As I updated my Flash player, I noticed that the "Search" box was located on the far right of the screen, despite there being no other content that far over.



I suspected that changing the size of the browser window would trigger some alternative layout that realigns the search box in relation to the top links. My suspicion was confirmed:



The search box remains right-aligned, but is now placed above the top navigation links rather than next to them.

It's an interesting and well-executed approach, and it should be noted, is not even that difficult to do.

Our widescreen future (and present)

You'd think we'd have this figured out by now, but the ever-changing nature of the internet, computers, monitors, and design has made "How big of a screen should we design for?" a question at the start of every web design project.

The super quick answer to that has changed over the years, from 640x480 WAY back in the mid-90s to 800x600 to the current "safe" standard of 1024x768. Basically, subtract about 25 or so pixels from the width to cover the size of the scrollbar and you should be safe.

But, if you look at trends in monitor sizes -- and many clients do -- you'll notice that the widescreen monitor is becoming more and more prevalent. The screen I'm looking at right now is 1680x1050, and there are plenty of monitors out there with even wider resolution. W3Schools lists the % of people using screen resolutions of "higher" than 1024x768 at 38% as of January 2008 -- which is an increase from 26% the year before. A similar jump would put fully half of monitors at higher than 1024x768 by January 2009 (I think it's time for them to start breaking out that "or higher" group).

For the most part, however, virtually all sites have stopped themselves from designing for anything wider than 1024, even though statistics would suggest that you are serving up unused real estate to about half your visitors. Why not design for larger?

Well, there's a good reason -- as screen resolutions get larger, people are less inclined to maximize their browsers to full screen. But that starts to be a sort of chicken and the egg question -- are users not maximizing their browsers because of the "wasted" space, or is the way we use our computers shifting such that we prefer seeing multiple windows at once?

It would be interesting to see a site take full advantage of wider browser windows -- it is sometimes being done (look at Clear Left or this Particletree example and change the size of the browser window, and you'll see the content adapt), but I think a lot of heavily-trafficked commercial sites are missing out on an opportunity here. There may be a fundamental shift in the thinking behind site design in the not-too-distant future as our viewing area gets increasingly wider and (thus relatively) shorter.

Some additional interesthing thoughts on the subject are at 456 Berea Street.

Why are the basics still so hard?

Last week I encountered a few situations where all I could think was, "why is this still so difficult?" In one case, someone who was incredibly tech savvy was having difficulty getting a TV to work with a particular attached device -- shouldn't this be easy by now? Why do we all still have four television remotes? Why is there such a confusing jumble of wires and inputs? Why haven't we figured this out yet? Virtually everyone (at least in the US) has a TV and at least one device attached to it -- a DVD player, a cable box, or maybe a TiVo, or AppleTV, or even a full home media system -- but these systems still seem designed from an engineer's perspective, not for the average Joe.

I don't know how to answer all those questions I posited there, but I'm hoping that we eventually reach a point where we start making a little more room for real world usability. I've heard (unfortunately I can't cite a statistic) that HDTVs are frequently returned because people think they're broken, when in reality it's because they haven't attached it to their cable connection correctly or they have not properly adjusted the settings, and if you mess all that up, the end picture often looks worse than old analog TV. But, how is an average person supposed to know that? And at what point do you get enough complaints and returns to actually go back to the design phase and say, "let's simplify this"?

A lot of designers thinks this means that people are stupid, and you have to oversimplify to the point of babying people. Let's snap out of that mindset, and instead try putting ourselves in someone else's shoes. Imagine some field you know nothing at all about, and now imagine an expert working on something that is ultimately meant for you, the "average" person. Wouldn't you want them to make it as clear and easy for you to understand as possible? So why balk at doing that in design?

New Portfolio Site

I've just relaunched my portfolio site. The re-design isn't hugely dramatic, and I will probably continue to do some behind-the-scenes tinkering to clean up the code and maybe do a little text editing here and there, but I'm proud of the relaunch!

The main differences:

• The primary navigation is now along the top
• There is more use of color throughout the site
• The "About" section has been expanded
• The thrust of the site is now more about making client connections rather than just showing what I've done in the past
• The new color switcher!

I've also tried something new where the entire site is designed without any images (with the exception of the portfolio imagery). Most websites use combinations of background graphics, graphics-as-text, and other graphical embellishments, but I gave myself the challenge of doing it all solely using HTML and style sheets. There may be a slight benefit in loading speed, but for the most part, this was purely as a personal challenge to see what I can achieve, and I'm pretty happy with the result.

One of the key additions to the portfolio section is the recent relaunch of the SpeakEasy Stage Company site, one of Boston's premier theater institutions. Check it out.

I also finally linked to my blog, which has been running for about 3 months now, as I wanted to make sure there was a decent back log of content available before promoting the blog. So feel free to peruse past entries and let me know what you think - leave a comment on a post if you find it interesting! (Please note that for now I am using a blogger template for the blog, but I plan to create my own blog layout soon - one step at a time.)

Thanks for visiting, and if you're looking for a new designer, hopefully I might be working with you soon!

Introducing the color switcher

I've just relaunched my portfolio website, and one of the main new features is the color switcher (pictured above). I realized a few things about my site as I was considering a redesign:

• My site has a very simple color pallette - black, white, and green - but the green was chosen somewhat arbitrarily. Why not a different color?
• My site should be more than just a place to show images of my work, it should show some of my coding ability as well.
• Some of the best design firm/portfolio sites I've seen add a level of interactivity that engages the visitor.

Those three concepts tied together quite well in the concept of the color switcher. I used the code from this helpful tutorial at A List Apart and removed all color declarations from my primary CSS style sheet (sorry if this is a bit codey for the non-coders), and then created seven style sheets that dealt only with colors. It also creates a cookie which remembers what color you last chose when you return to the site.

All in all, it is a fairly simple concept that can be executed in larger ways for other sites, such as changing font sizes or allowing re-skinning for users, and can extend well beyond colors into entirely reformatting the visual structure. CSS Zen Garden is a good example of this taken to the extreme, although unlike CSS Zen Garden, my color switcher requires no page refresh.

Pretty neat, huh?

What is accessibility?

One of my most enlightening experience at a previous job was learning more about web accessibility. At first the word "accessibility" may conjure images of people in wheelchairs needing ramps, rather than stairs, to enter buildings. This isn't so far off the mark in terms of web design.

Accessibility certainly deals with making websites that work for individuals with impairments that might make websites otherwise difficult to use. These can include:

• Visual Impairment - Note that this covers a wide range, from the completely blind (who use screen readers to have content read to them) to those with poor eyesight (who can see but need larger text and clear imagery) to those with color blindness (who may have difficult seeing certain contrasting colors, such as red text on a green background).
• Hearing Impairment - One might think this is not a problem on the web, but as video and sound are increasingly used, some sites have entire introductions and "avatars" that use audio to provide instructions and content -- without a text component, the hearing impaired are lost.
• Motor Skill Impairment - I don't know the technical term for this one, but it's important to remember that not everyone uses a mouse, and not everyone who uses a mouse has the dexterity to easily click on a link if it is just a few pixels in size.
  

The funny thing about designing websites with all of the above in mind is that you generally are improving usability for non-impaired visitors as well. Some people with fine vision may simply prefer larger text for reading, and good visual contrast makes a site easier on the eyes for everyone. Similarly, someone may not be hearing impaired but may be browsing your site in an environment where they can't have sound turned on (such as at work or at a library) -- making sure your navigation and content is available as text helps here, and can also help those who may not be fully fluent in your language and find it easier to read text. And of course, we've probably all been in situations where we've moved our mouse through a set of complicated drop-down menus only to get frustrated as moving 1 pixel outside the target area makes the whole menu disappear -- that doesn't require any impairment to be annoying.

There are also behind-the-scenes benefits -- websites coded with accessibility in mind can often place higher in search engines, as semantic markup (for example, labeling your headers as headers rather than just regular text with fancy font formatting), image text replacement (that is, whenever your graphics have text in them, the text should be written into the code as well), and proper usage of "alt" and "title" tags will help the search engine find your content and mark it as relevant.

It's also important to keep in mind that many web technologies -- such as JavaScript and Flash -- are not enabled or available to some users (the most notable recent example being the iPhone's lack of Flash support). The concept of "degrading gracefully" has become an important one -- essentially meaning that should these technologies be turned off, your site content should still display in a readable (and hopefully visually pleasing) manner.

I do not consider myself an expert in accessibility but it is certainly something I keep in mind as I design sites, and with each new project I try to implement new learnings. I think it's important to share this concept, however, as many people have never even heard of or thought about website accessibility. Having this knowledge in the back of your mind, even if you don't necessarily know 100% what its implications are, can help in the decision-making process during design. Accessibility issues may only be strictly necessary for a rather small minority of visitors, but designing with them in mind usually has a positive impact for everyone browsing your site.

How much can you know?

Confession time: I don't know everything. I know, you're shocked. But seriously, I was talking with a couple friends who are in web design, shooting the shit about various techniques and CSS and JavaScript (you know you're a nerd when...), and at one point I blurted out, "sometimes I feel like I don't know nearly as much as I should and I'm just making it up as I go along." My friend, who has had a few years more experience than I have, didn't miss a beat: "You just described everyone in our industry."

That was comforting, and probably true, as there are so many different things any individual could know in the field of web design that it's pretty much impossible to expect anyone to know it all. I'd argue that the greatest advancements in design have come from people who were making it up as they went along.

It seems to me that a good designer -- or perhaps more specifically a coder/developer -- doesn't necessarily need to know how to do every idea or assignment that comes their way. They just need to know how to LEARN how to do it.

I'll give an example of a recent project I did. There were a number of techniques I wanted to do, yet didn't know specifically how to do them off the top of my head. Among them: tabbed content within a page (rather than clicking to a new page for every tab), an automatic rotating image slideshow, a form that calculated various fees and totals in real time as you select different options, and a method to display content only if it exists on the server and how to present an alternative if it doesn't -- these are all things I had never done before, but knew I could figure them out, and I managed all of them successfully. Admittedly these are smaller features, and allowed me to learn in chunks rather than being presented with something as complex as "build us an online stock trading system." I felt confident tackling them because I at least knew enough about the various languages and techniques involved to know that they were all achievable, and as I worked on them, I learned more about other underlying concepts that will help me with the next new idea/design.

I think too many people, when given a challenge they don't already know how to complete, simply give up and think it's outside of their abilities. This is rarely true. There are still coding languages and techniques that seem so complex to me that I can't help but feel intimidated -- but breaking them down, and remembering that everyone who is now an "expert" was once in my shoes as well, has made me realize that knowing "how to know" is a skill that lets you do just about anything.

Learning to be self-aware

Jumping off of a concept from my last post about common sense usability, one of the most important things a good designer (particularly in the usability field) needs to be is self-aware. In general, people are extremely un-self-aware. Concepts of time are often way off (anecdotally, I remember my mother, in 2007, referring to Princess Diana's death as having been "a couple years ago," when in fact it had been ten years), and we tend to conflate memories into events that either didn't happen or occurred in separate times and places.

This is particularly an issue when working on web design. Very few people stop to ask of themselves the kinds of questions that are absolutely vital for good design. Where does my eye go first? This can help you organize the layout via information hierarchy. Am I moving my mouse to follow my eye? This may suggest good places to have hover states. Do I quickly click from page to page until I find what I want or do I scan a page fully before making my first click? This could inform your approach to site navigation. How many seconds does it REALLY take for me before I get annoyed at not finding what I want? This may determine whether a long-loading Flash module or graphics-heavy page is worth the sacrifice in loading time it may cost.

As important as it is to do proper testing and remember that, as the designer, you are rarely the intended audience, and you certainly know far more about the site than the average visitor will, you can still glean a lot of information just by carefully noting your own reactions -- even reactions to sites that have nothing to do with the one you are working on.

This is also helpful for someone who is not in design, but may need to work with a designer on a project. Are you working at a small organization that needs a better website? You'll be better able to get a top-notch end product if you are able to articulate clearly what your needs are, and you'll be better able to stand up for good usability practices if you end up working with a designer who has a great eye but perhaps a poor sense of usability. Think about your own site. Are there places you (or your visitors) frequently go to on your site that are buried? Is valuable home page real estate being devoted to unsupported or barely visited portions of your site? What aspects of your own site or your competitors' sites frustrate you and what do you find pleasing?

Asking these questions and being aware of your emotional state (by which I mean, happy, annoyed, indifferent, etc.) while browsing can help you pinpoint the design aspects that work and those that don't. So next time you find yourself frustrated by a website, stop for a second and think about what exactly is bothering you, and maybe even write it down. Similarly, next time you enter a site and find the information you want right away, think about what they did right -- this is often just as important or more important than finding the negatives, and frequently we don't even notice when something is done right.

But even when trying these exercises, keep in mind that there will undoubtedly be things you are doing that you are not realizing. It may sharpen your instincts, but for any larger scale project, you'll still need to take that critical look and apply it to other users to truly find underlying patterns and problems.

Why isn't usability common sense?

One of the things that has always amazed me is just how many books there are out there about every imaginable web-related topic from programming to strategy to marketing. And of course, there are plenty of books about usability and all its related fields.

Let me emphasize for a moment that I'm talking about BOOKS -- big thick tomes, hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pages long. I can't entirely fathom why they are all necessary. How much can you really say on any of these topics? But, I recognize that there is obviously a market for these books and I'm sure many find them incredibly useful. On that end, I chalk it up to a difference of approach -- most of what I have learned has come from experience and small chunks of learning, but I can certainly appreciate that others learn in a different way.

But the one thing that strikes me is just how much of this knowledge, particularly when it comes to usability, should be common sense but isn't. Certain things require research to determine, and may not be entirely obvious. People scan web pages in an F pattern. The first two words of a list item should carry the informational weight (even if it means poor grammar). Most people find websites via search engines. None of those things are all that surprising, but they're not the kind of things you'd expect the average person to know off-hand.

But what about some of the other, more "obvious" aspects of usability? Tiny fonts are hard to read. Straightforward, descriptive language is easier to understand. Human beings are creatures of habit. All of these things seem like they should be self-evident -- the last of those three is even a common proverb. But take a look online. The web is rampant with sites that use extremely small type, writers bury their content in made-up jargon and unclear, confusing prose, and many designers view it as a personal challenge to always break from traditional designs and interfaces in favor of flashy, unexpected interactions.

If you asked a construction team to build a house, but told them it should have no windows, the door should be a round porthole the size of a hula hoop, and the ceilings should be 4 feet high, you'd be called crazy. But, technically, it would still be a "functional" house, and it would certainly get some attention. A lot of websites seem to fall into this category, often because they are old and poorly made just due to a lack of skill/investment, but some newer websites even fall into this trap, as high-end designers seek to create showy, "interesting" sites that draw in the eye but fail when it comes to actual interaction.

Is it that these common sense ideas aren't common sense after all? Is there an innate drive among designers to always push against commonly-held perceptions? The challenge of anyone with an eye on usability is to recognize that the desire to question the status quo is enormously valuable -- but the ability to look critically at your own "innovative" ideas and recognize when change is a negative is possibly even more beneficial, and is certainly undervalued.

Don't blindly accept "the way things are," but don't abandon common sense in the name of innovative design.

Thinking too far ahead

When I worked at a large company, one of the things that stood out to me was the level of specialization everyone had. All my previous jobs were at smaller organizations where everyone had to know broader sets of skills often outside what might be considered their individual job description. A larger company allows for individuals to hone in on a specific area and become true "experts," and from that point of view, as any project moves through its development cycle, you'd ideally be handing it from expert to expert.

This approach has its pros and cons. It allows individuals to devote their time, energy, and learning to a very specific area to presumably become better at it, but it also means that they may not understand the implications their well-researched ideas may have on later stages of development. They may be torn between two ideas for a website interaction that seem equally valid, not realizing that one is a coding nightmare and the other is straightforward and simple code. In fact, when it came to web design, I would say that probably 70-80% of the people at the large company I worked at had no idea how to code.

As someone with a decently broad set of web knowledge, I worry that sometimes I suffer from the opposite problem -- I think so far ahead to the later coding stage about how I'm going to do something, that in the early design stages I may stop myself from creating certain designs because I know they'll be a coding headache, even if ultimately the overall experience/design might be better by going the more "difficult" path.

In the end, I think the best way to handle this is to try to focus on getting each step of the process right in itself, but with an idea in the back of your mind about how, for example, interaction may affect the visual design or how the visual design may affect the coding. Whether that is multiple people on one project or one person doing the whole thing, don't let yourself think TOO far ahead, but don't have blinders on either. It's a tricky feat of compartmentalization but, at the very least, it's worth taking a look at and being aware of how each step in your process affects the others.

Using breadcrumbs to define IA

"Breadcrumbs" is a technique used to let visitors know where they are in a site as they get deeper into content. An example might be:

Home > About the Company > Staff > Creative Director

Usually all but the current page is also a link, which lets you go up how ever many levels you want in one click. Generally it's a rather useful technique, particularly in large sites with many layers to them.

Rottentomatoes.com has an interesting take on breadcrumbs. In addition to setting up the hierarchy in a left-to-right manner, they also scale the text to match the relative "size" of each section. It's a good way of enforcing a mental map. Just as the United States is bigger than Massachusetts, which in turn is bigger than Boston, RT shows that the "Movies" section is bigger than "In Theaters" which is also bigger than the individual page for "The Dark Knight."

While there are a couple potential issues with how they have set this up (the breadcrumbs themselves don't really look like links, the / is not necessarily the best separator, and it is a bit odd that the movie name is in a different font), the overall concept is one I hadn't seen before and quite appreciate. It not only tells you where you are but reinforces the hierarchy and information architecture of the site.

Kudos, RT.

Starbucks misses the mark

If you've visited the Starbucks website recently, you may have noticed the floating "Got a great idea?" link that follows you around the site. Generally I don't like floating elements like that which appear without you asking for them, but it gets people's attention, and at least this is a somewhat benevolent gesture.

The major problem? There's no "Close" button. This thing will follow you around on every page forever -- there is no way to make it go away.

They've turned an effort to increase customer satisfaction into a creepy widget that won't leave you alone.

The Hurdle of Visuals

You've worked your heart out on a project, coming up with a great site structure, smart placement of content on each page, and a solid outer shell of basic fonts and colors, and you present the work to your client. What's the first thing you hear? "I don't like the photos." Many of us have been there before. After all your hard work, the only thing the client can see are the images (which usually they have provided and you have no control over). How do you get people to look at the right things?

One of the biggest challenges facing anyone in the field of information architecture/interaction design/usability (etc.) is the careful line of visual fidelity. Human beings are naturally extremely visual people. Look at the stats for most product sites, and you'll probably find that the most visited portions are photo galleries and other high-visual/low-text areas.

Unfortunately, strictly speaking, much of the work in this field is not particularly visual. Yes, a good information architect lays out where things lay on the page, but in many (most?) situations they are not the ones creating the graphics files, choosing colors and fonts, writing copy, taking (and choosing) photographs, etc. One of my favorite sayings comes from the field of film, and basically states, "a good editor has done his job when nobody notices his work." The point being, a bad editing job is going to be obvious and annoying, but a good editing job is going to be completely overlooked as the viewer is immersed in the film itself rather than the editing. The same goes for many user experiences. People notice when it's frustrating, but a seamless, intuitive experience lets the user focus on the content, not the process.

I bring this topic up now because I am wrestling with the best way to present work, both at an internal wireframe level and at a client-facing presentation level. I remember a project at my last job where five members of my team were independently presenting wireframes to a client -- the idea was to treat it almost like a pitch meeting as if we were different firms rather than just members of the same team. It was a fun challenge as we all got along well, but the differences in our approaches were stark. Some of us made ultra-simple wireframes, just black and white boxes with Arial text. Others added a layer of polish with gradients, nicer fonts, and drop-shadows. Some used photographs, others used representative "silhouette" images, some just used placeholder boxes. Before our client presentation, our boss looked across our examples and decided we shouldn't be biasing the client toward or against any design based on the fidelity of the wireframes. Let the IA speak for itself.

This posed a problem for me -- my design was very sparse, and was intended to highlight the imagery of the product itself by minimizing navigation and text. Removing images meant that there were large areas of blank space now in my presentation. Would the client be able to "project" the imagery in their own mind and see how it looked? Would she end up preferring a presentation that was heavy on text and navigation because there was no imagery competing for visual attention?

It's a tricky question. My boss could have suggested the opposite -- everyone HAD to add photos and gloss up their wireframes. But then would the client focus on images chosen rather than the IA? How do you make a client look at the right things? And on that note, how do you get your co-workers to even look at the right things when presenting internally?

The answer all depends largely on who your audience is. You could have a super-savvy client who can envision the finished product just from a wireframe, or you could have a client who sees a wireframe and dismisses the work entirely because it doesn't look like the polished, finished sites they're used to seeing. And on an internal level, particularly in firms where different people work on different aspects of sites -- such as an IA building wireframes and a designer creating the actual visuals -- you can find yourself stepping on toes. Does a high-fidelity wireframe make the designer feel like you're dictating their job? Conversely, does a low-fidelity wireframe make you look sloppy? Can you make something that projects a polished, dynamic end product while still respecting that technically, the visual polish is someone else's job?

In general, I think I tend to over-design wireframes and under-design comps. Most of my wireframing is in an agency environment, where it helps to have nice fonts and clean lines, but inserting sample imagery and venturing into the land of colors and graphics are going too far. Meanwhile, as a freelance designer, clients often can't see the finished product if they don't have imagery in place as well, although I think it's best to use different imagery from what they might see on their live site today, just to underscore that the imagery may change frequently but the structure and visual design will be constant.

Why are hosting admins so awful?

One of the new challenges I've faced in expanding my freelance work is that I have to interact with a variety of admin interfaces for different clients' web hosts. And they pretty much all suck. Why is that?

To be fair, web hosts have a tricky line to walk -- in many cases, experienced coders will be the ones interacting with the admin interface, and it is appropriate to use more advanced knowledge and to reduce the number of "walk you by the hand" tools. But at the same time, you may be dealing with staff members at smaller organizations who know next to nothing about web coding and yet are in charge of doing things like setting up email addresses and uploading files. Ideally, this would never really be the case -- but in those situations it does make sense to have a few tools and wizards to help.

So why do these hosting companies build interfaces that confound everyone equally? I just logged into one that instructed me NOT to use FTP to upload files (an incredibly simple procedure that is basically "drag and drop"), and that I was required to use FrontPage for fear of corrupting files. Of course, I'm ignoring this, as there's no logical way I'd be corrupting anything, but it's bizarre that this was set up this way in the first place. I'd figure that if you are in charge of a hosting company, you'd probably be an expert on how that sort of thing works, and I can't imagine any expert would set things up to require a particular software program to function (unless there is some devious co-branding going on here).

The worst case I saw was a company that actually professed to be comprised of usability experts. Not only was their administrative back-end completely unusable, but just finding out how to get help was confusing. They listed different methods of help contact for different "plan" levels, but nowhere (even after logging in) did it tell you what plan you were on.

Hosting companies could take a serious lesson from the variety of new admin interfaces that have popped up -- whether it's Facebook or Blogger or Flickr -- and note how simple and clear those interfaces usually are. One might argue they are not as complex as a full hosting package, but that is no reason to bury tools and functionality in unfamiliar terms or to overcomplicate simple processes. If these interfaces are confounding me, someone who works in the web industry and knows how to code a site, I can't imagine how confusing they must be to those less versed in web technologies.

As a side note, this seems to be a persistent problem I find whenever I am researching new ways to do things. When I am lucky enough to stumble on to a tutorial for a new technique, it invariably turns out to be an overly detailed process for something much simpler than what I was looking for. Conversely, when I actually do find information about the technique I'm looking for, it's frequently presented with the expectation that the reader already has an advanced understanding of the subject at hand, thus offering little value to someone who is actually trying to learn something genuinely new to them.

Much like bad hosting admin interfaces, bad tutorials fail to think about their prospective audience. Either cater your instructions to multiple types of users, or say upfront what the user should already know before reading (and if possible, link them to where they can learn that information if they don't already know it).

Desiging for iPhones

At my last job, for quite some time the place was abuzz with the word "mobile." Mobile apps, mobile this, mobile that. Every client wanted to have some sort of mobile aspect to their sites, and they threw the word out often with little regard for how mobile would be used and whether their visitors even had any need or desire for it.

Somewhat oddly, this seemed to have largely been triggered by the launch of the iPhone, which doesn't actually require any special "mobile" version -- it can access sites just as any computer can. Some folks internally thought that, as things continued moving in a "computer in the palm of your hand" direction, the distinction between mobile and desktop versions of sites would become a moot point.

But a year after the iPhone launched I think it's clear that you can't just plan for the iPhone version of the site to be the same. I don't own an iPhone myself, but I remember using a friend's iPhone last summer to check my Gmail. The process was clunky, and although Google tends to have fairly lightweight sites, it still was rather slow, probably due to the AJAX going on. Recently I borrowed a friend's iPhone and realized that Google had created an iPhone-specific version of Gmail, which showed a marked improvement. I've seen other sites create iPhone versions with far less success -- Fandango tries to get it right, but their decision to spread showtimes for a single movie theater over multiple pages, rather than just keeping them on one scrollable page, was a serious misstep ("scroll fear" really needs to be ditched completely) -- it made me have to memorize showtimes from one page to the next if I wanted to compare multiple movies, and slowed things down by requiring the iPhone to load multiple pages.

All this got me wondering about what sites are worth making iPhone versions available? What sites are users most likely to visit when a regular computer is not available? A few things come to mind -- email, maps, movie times, cafes and restaurants -- the sorts of things where you might want to get a little information about a place while you are out and about.

I don't have any statistics to back those things up -- they are based on guesses and about the kinds of things I think people might want to find when not near a computer. But I think it's important that whenever a company is looking at their own website that they think strategically about what their iPhone users might need. Do they really need an alternate version of the site? Can you design your site in such a way so that it works without needing separate versions for the iPhone? Are there particular tools that iPhone users may be more apt to use (i.e., a Starbucks.com iPhone visitor may need a store locator but not care at all about company info)? And since, to my knowledge, iPhones still do not support Flash, are you making sure to have your site available in a non-Flash version?

I'll be curious to see how sites evolve as the iPhone age soldiers on, and if the upcoming 3G iPhone will have any design ramifications. It is key, however, to remember to view any new web aspect -- whether it is iPhones or social networking or RSS feeds -- in light of your particular company's needs. A poorly executed (or unnecessary) implementation of features often do far more harm than leaving those features out and waiting until there is a clear need for them.

Dominant Design

One of the most interesting concepts in design that I've come across covers all sorts of media, and that's the concept of dominant design. My understanding, in short, is that something is a "dominant design" when it becomes so ubiquitous that it is virtually impossible to replace it with an alternative. A good example is the QWERTY keyboard. There was certainly logic behind its creation (although the rumor that part of the design was based around being able to type the word "typewriter" using only the top line of keys is sure to make any usability person frown), but I've heard that testing other layouts has shown that there are, in fact, better ways to arrange the keys. But if you try to sell a computer with a non-QWERTY keyboard, you will fail. The design is too omnipresent to be challenged.

I find this issue particularly interesting lately because it seems a lot of things long considered dominant design are being challenged. The most compelling example I can think of is how the standard gasoline-powered car engine is now being challenged mightily by hybird, electric, and fuel-cell alternatives. The whole "green" movement is having an impact on dominant designs in a number of other fields too, from architecture to food to energy production (one of the most fascinating stories I've heard is how some engineers are attempting to collect the energy generated by footsteps in a building's lobby and use it for power -- a wonderful example of conservation, if it is achievable).

In the world of design, trying to "break the rules" is a perennial goal of many designers. Tell a designer something has to be a certain way and they almost always will want to do it a different way. I met many creative folks at my last job who were always trying to come up with new and "exciting" ways to handle website interactions - a headache for me from a UI perspective as generally "new and exciting" translates to "confusing and annoying" to users. Designers may love change but most people hate it, and many actions are so ingrained that trying to break those habits is generally not worthwhile.

But that doesn't mean that challenging a "dominant design" is a bad idea. It's just important to make sure it's being done in a way that doesn't put off users, and that the impetus for change is coming from the point of view of "there's a better way to do this" rather than "I just want to be different."

Designs often become dominant for very good reasons, and in a pinch, it's generally safe to assume that if everybody else is doing something a certain way, it's fine to follow suit. But stepping back and heading to the drawing board from scratch occasionally is definitely a worthwhile exercise. You may end up realizing that the "standard" way is the best way after all, but it's worth making the occasional challenge to dominant design. You may just end up finding a better way after all.

"The New Trends" (or "Why Web 2.0 is a Worthy Term")

Recently a client asked me the fairly benign question, "so what are the new trends in web design?" My initial thought was that this was so broad a question that even listing a few dozen trends would barely scratch the surface. But upon further reflection, I realized it wasn't such a tough question after all. As a corollary, I imagine fashion editors are posed such questions daily, and any one of them could probably spit out a reasonably accurate soundbite. "Bright colors and loose, flowing garments cinched with thick belts are all the rage." I have no idea if that is actually what is popular in fashion right now, but it's certainly the kind of answer one might expect to plausibly hear, and that kind of answer would probably be sufficient for a casual observer.

There are a few different aspects to web design -- functionality, visuals, and programming among them -- and you can name quick responses to all of them. Social networking and interactive "make it your own" experiences are popular from a functional point of view. Visually, gradients, larger text, and reduced visual clutter are becoming widespread. And from a programming point of view, although I admit this is where I am least familiar, there is a renewed emphasis on semantic markup, open-source programming, and lightweight applications (basically, yes we almost all connect via broadband these days, but we can still make things move even faster). As someone in the field of usability, I'm tempted to say these are all ways of saying the same basic thing, a la the fashion editor soundbite: Web design is shifting from a "look what we can do!" showiness to a "look what you can do!" utility focus.

This is somewhat inevitable. As such a young medium, web design was really flopping around without a clue in its formative years. Since there were very few clear "right ways" to do things, trends came and went, and as anyone who has ever worked in a design agency knows, often the first thing a design team does when starting a new project is just look at everything the competition is doing, sometimes emulating work without really knowing if it's genuinely the best approach (this is not entirely without merit, however -- a key tenet of good usability is standardization).

This era of web design feels like the clean-up period after a major project's initial launch. Everyone is going back and looking at how they used to do things and seeing if there is a better way (there almost always is). Perhaps this is why the unquantifiable notion of Web 2.0 has caught on. It really does feel like the second phase. We get how this works now. We know the ground rules. Now it's time to make everything better.

A Beginning

This is not the first time I've attempted to start a blog. I had one going for about 4 entries several months ago, where I was trying to present usability and design advice in a Jakob Nielsen-esque "this is how you should do things." But I realized rather quickly that limiting myself to usability design (and then requiring myself to write in a prescriptive manner) was far too restrictive.

So I'm letting myself branch out a bit. I want to focus on talking about design, but not limit myself. I tend to let my mind wander on to vaguely philosophical topics and I don't want to stop myself from talking about those things if I think others may find it interesting. And, more importantly, I don't want to write from a "do things this way" point of view because, while I have skill and experience, I don't know everything, and I don't think it's particularly responsible of me to claim that my ways of thinking will work for others.

I'm also letting myself (temporarily) disregard the visual design of this blog. I spent some time customizing templates the last time I tried to make a blog and, in retrospect, I realize I was valuing style over content. Maybe that's the first lesson I learn as a blogger: a good-looking nothing is still nothing.